A while ago, I made some large update to my 15.10 that caused the sound to not work, such as in the question: No sound after startup, have to alsa force-reload.
The accepted answer links to this page, which recommends typing sudo alsa force-reload and rebooting.
The issue is that I have to type that command at every boot, sometimes multiple times, in order to get sound. I've tried the other recommendations on that page, but to no avail.
Short of a cron job (because it's not ideal to automate), can I fix this issue once and for all?
Best Answer
If this problem occurs after upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04, it's not a problem in alsa itself but in the timidity converter.
Disable timidity and you won't even need to force reboot alsa on startup